Comment by miguel-muniz

Multiple thoughts on this:

1.0 Creating a software bundle is the expected play by a company that keeps trying to grow their subscription revenue, but lots of creators are fed up paying an arm and a leg for software they'll never own that they need to do their job. Canva turned a lot of heads and got new people into Affinity just by making it free, I would have liked to see Apple lead with the same pitch rather than make just another bundle.

2.0 I feel like this is a u-turn on what made buying Apple hardware so great. You paid a pretty penny for the hardware but you would get high quality software with more care and attention paid to it than their competitors. This has changed in recent years, with many of the iWork products languishing with only minor updates as the market has evolved towards simplified cloud-based tools. Although there's still free functionality and the subscription provides a more affordable way to get into their pro tools, I fear the free versions will become second-class.

2.1 The same has happened to their stance on advertising as well, with the App Store getting ads and Maps being next in line to get them too. Microsoft and Google are still much worse than Apple in this regard, but I thought they would hold out for much longer than cave to growing pressures to grow revenue.

3.0 I'm not a fan of putting generative AI as a selling point in a product called "creator studio". Many artists are against the usage for various reasons, and Apple has a long history of aligning themselves with creative individuals. Seems like a misunderstanding of what their audience would want.

4.0 No Garageband or iMovie feels like they've abandoned them. Which is a shame for tools that have started so many creator's careers. There's still a need for simplified tools for creators early in their careers or with simpler needs, something that CapCut has shown.

5.0 There's still gaps in their bundle. There's no software for UI design. I could see Apple acquiring Sketch, they would just need to reach feature parity with Figma. There's lots of organizations getting squeezed by Figma's enterprise contracts, and most product designers I know are already on Macs. There's also no drawing or animation software. I could see them acquiring the team behind Procreate and Procreate Dreams to fill it. That software already sells iPads, many artists have gotten their start with digital art with it. Another gap is publishing, although they could probably add functionality to Pages or buy Swift Publisher.

6.0 Who is this for? Every organization under the sun already pays for Office 365, and I've never known a designer who's used Pixelmator for their day to day work. Affinity felt like a much more compelling alternative to Adobe, and anyone with simple enough needs to use these tools is probably already using web-based tools on their Windows laptop. I suppose hobbyists, but I'm not sure if a subscription is compelling for them.